Email Finally Emerges as a Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/greplin_wisestamp_email_apps.php#more <comment> loup-vaillant > _That product was probably ahead of its time, it's not fully in the cloud > and it's not free._

> _The key enabling factor […] is a secure way to grant temporary access to > […] your email to trusted developers out in the larger ecosystem […] - <USER2> > without ever giving them your precious email password._

> _The sky's the limit when you can quickly process huge stores of your own > personal data, though._

Am I the only one that find that downright scary? Who wants a future in which several (not just one) profitable companies can access your e-mail _and_ analysing it blazing fast? That may be a dream for some, but for me that's an Orwellian nightmare.

Here's a reminder, for the few that haven't seen it yet: [http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/01/freedom- clou...](http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/01/freedom-cloud- software-freedom-privacy-and-securit/)

<comment> mike-cardwell "Who wants a future in which several (not just one) profitable companies can access your e-mail and analysing it blazing fast?"

It's all about choice. If I want to grant some organisation access to all, or a subset of my email, then that's fine. It's up to the individual what they want to share and with whom.

<comment><USER3> It's going to take a long time, though, before it really sinks in to the general population that you cannot reliably _remove_ access to data. In the interim, we'll continue to have lots of hand-wringing and legal flailing about, which makes this whole space uncertain for companies too large to move offshore and too small to throw lobbyists at the problem.

<comment><USER4> It may take a while to sink in, but even if it does, the general public probably won't care enough to change their behavior. People want instant gratification; they'll see it at most as a gamble: "What are the odds that this company will do something wrong with my data?"... or at worst, they'll just ignore the risk of consequences completely, like many people do in daily life.

<comment><USER5> Which of course is the wrong question. The right question is "what are the odds that someone will acquire this company so that they can do something wrong to all its users?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Again, completely useless unless you are using Gmail. Wake me when they come out with a Firefox plugin that doesn't require Gmail.

Really cool, though (I'm referring to Rapportive).

<comment> mike-cardwell I can see other desktop email clients and webmail clients wanting to add this sort of functionality. Does rapportive offer any sort of API to the social networking data they display?

<comment><USER7> Take a look at <http://www.rapleaf.com/developer>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some of these sound useful but I think we could all do without the services that append more crap to your email. It's obnoxious.</comment>


File synchronisation - <AUTHOR> http://retout.co.uk/blog/2010/12/26/conduit

<comment><USER2> _"If anyone mentions Dropbox to me one more time, I will scream. I'm sure it's a wonderful solution, but I have deep misgivings about handing my data over to someone I don't trust."_

It's really disturbing how eagerly most people are willing to hand over personal information to corporations; whether it's data to the likes of Dropbox, movie viewing preferences to Netflix, book reading preferences to Amazon, all of one's email conversations to Google, and a list of who one's friends are to Facebook.

I could go on and on listing information that the vast majority of people give away about themselves without a second thought to get some "free" service.

And the saddest thing is that few people care, or even think about what they're doing.

Hopefully, as the general public becomes more computer literate, and groups like the EFF and ACLU educate them on the privacy implications of these technologies, their attitudes might change for the better.

<comment><USER3> I had misgivings about Dropbox too, which is why I only sync one file, namely a 1GB TrueCrypt archive with all my data inside it. I hear Dropbox added TrueCrypt support in some fashion in their latest release, but I haven't investigated that yet.

<comment><USER4> If you are sharing with other people, something like encfs would be better:

<http://www.arg0.net/encfsintro>

Encfs encrypts file by file, so you do not have to worry about multiple people editing (and possibly corrupting) one giant file.

<comment><USER3> Sounds good, but no Windows version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The solution is quite simple: use Dropbox to synchronize a single binary file that is a LUKS-encrypted Linux filesystem (or TrueCrypt or whatever).

This meets all the requirements this person is asking for. All his systems could even be mounting the image using different passphrases (IIRC LUKS allows up to 8 different passphrase for the same image). It will work well because Dropbox will of course synchronize the deltas and not transmit the whole image every time a single byte changes.

Only downside is you can only have 1 client mounting the image at a time... Perhaps some clustered filesystem could get rid of this limitation (that would be an interesting use of them).

<comment><USER6> Isn't that a pretty big downside? Maybe I'm alone, but I use dropbox mostly for collaboration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> First comment on the post mentions Unison (<http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/index.html>), which I'd never heard of - but looks pretty sweet for some things I've been meaning to do.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe he should look into using Tarsnap (tarsnap.com).

</comment><comment><USER9> iFolder, originally developed by Novell. (Or so I heard.)

<http://ifolder.com/ifolder/features></comment>


The rise and fall (OK – mostly fall) of Yahoo - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-rise-and-fall-mostly-fall-of-yahoo-ddbceb44670c <comment><AUTHOR> My main takeaway from Yahoo's decline is that you should promote leadership from within. Hiring CEOs from the professional CEO circuit probably killed Yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER2> yep, yesterday I also find great article via newstab.com this was the source link: [http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/25/technology/yahoo-verizon- dea...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/25/technology/yahoo-verizon-deal- sale/index.html)</comment>


Tips to rock your next conference talk - <AUTHOR> http://rizwanjavaid.com/blog/2017/4/3/how-to-rock-your-next-conference-talk-part-1 <comment><USER2> This doesn't really apply to _academic_ conferences, which tend to have a more subdued atmosphere. (And you don't control the environment you present in, and there will be multiple talks in the sessions.)

I am on board with "hook them from the start", but you have to change it for an academic crowd. They will bristle at trying to be sensational. In an academic computer science context, it means put your conclusions _first_ , along with your best results. People may tune out after the first few minutes, so you'd better tell them the most important stuff right away. The rest of your talk is then supporting and explaining how you achieved your best results.

<comment><USER3> I agree (with the sibling comment) that this is more general advice than just for academic settings.

I can't tell you how many presentations I sit through (or emails I read) that read like murder mysteries. Tell me the conclusion or essential element up front, so that I can frame my consumption a little better. Don't start with the Big Bang, the creation of matter, the coalescing into galaxies and planets, etc, etc and then build up the conclusion from all those constituent elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find books are much better treatment of complex topics like public speaking. Blog posts of people who give several talks a year don't have the breadth and depth - they are essentially a list of small tips that work for that individual.

I would recommend the book "Even a geek can speak".

I did find the tips the author shared. But if you are fundamentally a poor speaker, you want to work on the fundamentals rather than marginal tips.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would definitely push for improving your speaking before you address these types of details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My number one tip for a conference talk is to use the 5 minutes before your talk starts (but people are filing in) to start connecting to the audience.

During the talk itself there's high expectations. People may have paid a lot, travelled overnight, found a baby sitter to be there. But during the travel time and breaks the expectations are much lower.

Use that time to your advantage. Tell a joke, an anecdote related to your topic, ask a good question of the audience. Start building that rapport before your slot even begins.

This helps your audience warm up to you, and helps you slide more comfortably into your talk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Love this tip. I like to hand out a worksheet before my talk personally to each attendee. This way I get to meet them personally to make a connection. This helps me relax as well. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For academic seminars, I have started to always go through David Tong's ``How to Make Sure Your Talk Doesn't Suck'' [0], before and after writing the presentation. I believe that it has at least helped me improve and feel more confident.

[0] www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/talks/talk.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing the great resource. I was hooked on the first slide. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tips are fun! Here are mine:

\- Make sure to provide a text version of your talk online, in a sane format.

\- Keep text off your slides. Use them to show code, or kittens, but not bullet points.

\- Remember that you're speaking to an intelligent audience. They'll have more fun if you leave some stuff unsaid, and let them come to their own conclusions.

\- Go through the painful process of watching yourself speak on video, to identify and correct the many verbal tics you didn't know you had.

\- Have a single shot of booze ten minutes before liftoff

<comment><USER8> Do you write your entire talk out before you give it?

<comment><USER7> Yes, as many times as I can stand.

<comment><USER8> Do you memorize and rehearse the fully written-out talks?

For the most part you don't come off as having scripted the whole talk, but there are tells in your transcripts that they were written first.

<comment><USER7> I rehearse the talks but don't memorize them, if that makes any sense. The process of rewriting them ad nauseam helps me remember what to say.

I think of it as crossing a stream, and there are certain rocks that I have to make sure I step on. But getting between them is somewhat improvisational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 0\. Tell something useful

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pre-requisite. :)</comment></comment>


The Assange Case: Common Misconceptions - <AUTHOR> http://amiobjective.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/assange-case-common-misconceptions.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> Can anyone verify the statements in this post?

<comment><USER3> Well, I found this overview from the Swedish prosecutor to be very helpful:

[http://www.aklagare.se/In-English/Media/The-Assange- Matter/T...](http://www.aklagare.se/In-English/Media/The-Assange-Matter/The- Assange-Matter/)

Obviously this is "biased" -- but I've not been able to spot any "overt" errors here. I've been looking at Norwegian and Swedish media in addition to the (pretty fact starved) international media coverage -- and I was also under the impression that Assange wasn't considered a suspect -- he is.

I have no idea why apparently no media source has managed to get this right -- as presented it has appeared that Assange has been wanted extradited to testify -- which makes absolutely no (legal) sense. It would appear that's not what has happened.

My (personal, IANAL etc) interpretation of the events is that a complaint was filed against Assange -- the prosecutor that handled the case found no reason to prosecute. Then (probably due to political pressure -- although I have no evidence of this) -- the head prosecutor picks up the case again, and an arrest warrant is issued.

The whole affair dovetails a little to nicely with CIA procedure for discrediting inconvenient persons, eg:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO>

That being said, it's not inconceivable that Assange is a misogynistic pig -- he certainly appear to have a bit of an ego -- and I don't think anyone would be against him being sentenced in a fair trial.

However, the political pressure involved in this case seems rather extreme -- I do think there's a real danger of Assange disappearing into a black bag at some point -- after all _if_ the US wants him, it would be for espionage -- and kidnapping a single individual is nothing compared to drone strike assassinations.

It is of course inconvenient that this dissident is white, articulate and currently in a country that has a working government.

A Swedish English language media source I discovered recently might also be of interest:

<http://www.thelocal.se/42424/20120804/>

<comment><USER2> Awesome info hunting work there. :)

The one thing that strikes me as a bit batty from the 'CIA is going to kidnap him camp' is that in the cases of rendition the victims generally do not end up on US soil, in US courts.

Much rather in another country who's legal is system is more opaque (or transparent depending on your version of crime and punishment)

Given the US desire to put Assange on trial you'd figure they'd do the public legal stuff.

<comment><USER3> Thanks - I've been rather frustrated by the poor journalistic handiwork associated with this case for some time.

It does seem a bit far fetched that the CIA would grab him from either London or a large town in Sweden. It might not be so far fetched for them to do something if he is serving time in a Swedish prison.

At least the CIA does fly some of its rendition flights through Sweden -- and it's a shorter trip from there to a few choice black sites in Eastern Europe.

Either way, I'd guess the US' motivation at this point is to make sure Assange gets punished and discredited -- and maybe even the discrediting and splintering of Wikileaks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:What will you make if you got two months off from work? - <AUTHOR>

If you get two months off from your regular job or business, and if you decide to spend it coding instead of a vacation, what will you make? Is there any good pending projects you would like to work on? <comment><USER2> I have a list about 20 items long. I'd probably spend a good portion of that two months trying to decide which project to take up lol.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got laid off from my job at the beginning of summer. Over the summer I helped a startup (which I thought I was going to be partners with but they decided otherwise), made some small demos exploring some interaction ideas, and spent time interviewing for other positions / traveling for a couple weeks.

Some of the interaction ideas were intended for another mini startup idea, but after demoing prototypes I wasn't happy enough with the response - it was a "oh that's neat" but not enough "please take my money". I'm now trying reapplying the ideas to a use case with a more interesting business plan.

On the plus side, I now have an on-going part-time contract job where I work from home. Surprisingly I almost make the same if not more money now with less hours, go swimming during lunch, and have time to focus on side projects.

I'm seriously thinking about moving closer to the mountains.

Do I recommend getting laid off/quitting? No. I was honestly freaking out for the first 2-3 months of summer. I was a bit lucky that I already had some companies calling me a week after I was laid off.

Do I recommend always putting in a couple hours every day on a side project? Yes. Get some idea of whether your idea will work out or not, and do your customer problem/solution interviews. Go to coffee shops/libraries to help concentrate.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would definitely like to work on something that can provide me some passive income later. I don't have any good idea for that. If not that I may work on some design projects of other startups to sharpen my skills or may be some Wordpress themes. Interested in knowing what cool ideas other people have.

</comment><comment><USER5> The two months is the easy part. Finding funding to live on the meantime is, well, so difficult that it's effectively impossible. I'm a contractor right now and 100% of my time goes to survival. I have infinite ideas, any one of which could make a lot of money, but no way to justify working on them when I'm perpetually behind on rent.

</comment><comment><USER6> The exact same question, plus one month, was asked a week ago, to the day:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4554345>

<comment><USER4> Nice discussion but it isn't exactly the same question. Here OP is asking about people ideas to making something(most probably applications) instead of learning something in two months time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd go to Maui, and later resign. ;)</comment>


Ask HN: My GCP Account Has been Hacked What do I do? - <AUTHOR> I have had a number of GCP accounts over the past 5 years, but this last month I have appeared to have been hacked. As a result there are resources that I cannot remove that Google Support refuses to help with. What do I do? This hacker has run up a very large bill, and I do not have the resources to pay it. It would be crazy to me that I would be the first person to run into this issue so advice is welcome. <comment><USER2> Google has no support, and when you do not pay they will brick every Google account you have.

Start a Google Takeout immediately if you have any personal data, and if you use Gmail then update all accounts to a non-Google email address.

Google Takeout: [https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-google- takeout-4173795](https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-google-takeout-4173795)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't worry.

You just did exactly what you needed to do! Post to HN and hope the thread gets enough upvotes to reach the frontpage to find a human at Google.

<comment><USER4> That's actually so sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ouch. What resources can you not remove? What exactly are you running?

In general, as first thing stop the bleeding:

1\. Stop your services from running

2\. Check your IAM policies for anything suspicious, new service accounts, new users. Clean up.

3\. Rotate all your Service Accounts and Service Account's keys! If possible re-provision your machines (with a new SA) and redeploy your apps.

4\. Check your VPC's firewall

Then you absolutely need to figure out how you've been hacked. If the breach is on the application layer you must figure out where and patch it. Check your application logs.

Then check your GCP activity logs, search for unexpected calls from service accounts - assume the attacker has compromised a service account and search for attempt to persist with calls to `setIam` or other sensitive api calls.

Sorry, I'm on mobile but feel free to reach out If you need (email in profile)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm just here for the support. There is definitely someone here lurking that could definitely help :)

Also, I've seen a trend of terrible google support. Is this the norm?</comment>


Futurist Kurzweil Says He's Building AI into Google Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/528656/ray-kurzweil-says-hes-breathing-intelligence-into-google-search/?utm_campaign=socialsync&utm_medium=social-post&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> When we built Enginuity Search Engine to better understand and contextualize information the Bayesian approach simply does not work. We ended up building a different (and we think better) approach which works very well and used by top schools like Harvard.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll be interested to see how he gets on. I had a read of his book and it's a tricky to see if that hidden hierarchical markov models stuff is going to the answer in AI or not.</comment>


IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25

<comment><USER2> I find it amusing that we declare the end of America by the simple fact that another country may become a greater economic power.

I'm just envisioning America popping out of existence -every man, woman, child, cow, car and building going _poof_ \- the moment the Chinese economy becomes greater.

Strikes me as the "X is Dead" meme.

</comment><comment><USER3> The surprising thing would be if a country with 4 times the population of the US didn't eventually surpass it in terms of sheer economic size.

I'm not an economist, but in my opinion this is far from meaning the end of "the American Age". I have no doubt that day will come (nothing lasts forever), but I would bet that is a lot more likely to happen when GDP per capita in China overcomes that of the US... and that day is far into the future. Specially if you consider the political changes that a 4 fold increase in per capita wealth will bring to such a country.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thinking in terms of 'size' is old thinking.

Plus it is not clear whether the growth of China is sustainable. It is an authoritarian dictatorship, huge increasing environmental problems, and much of the growth of the last decade is more like an experiment whose results are still not known.

The US has enough problems that it would not need to worry about China. What the US definitely needs to fix is the trade inbalance with China and its outsourcing of manufacturing to China.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone changing investment strategies based on news like this?

</comment><comment><USER6> The one thing no one ever mentions about America is this: it's well governed and free for most part. That in itself makes it a country that people aspire to be part of. I wonder if people would say that about China - ever.</comment>


Personal Experience As An iOS Freelancer - <AUTHOR> http://skylarrudolph.blogspot.com/2014/03/what-i-learned-about-freelance-ios.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I think charging per feature is fundamentally better than charging per hour. For you to start your business up, you need to ensure your clients get a fair price for what they want.</comment>


How to raise money without lying to investors  - <AUTHOR> http://venturehacks.com/articles/lying-to-investors?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nivi+%28Nivi%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> I believe this a a duplicate of this post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1068029></comment>


Can a wireless taser upend an electroshock monopoly? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007376/axon-taser-monopoly-digital-ally-wireless <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16369977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16369977)</comment>


Ask HN: Does Serverless reduce carbon footprint of computing? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know any stats or details about sustainability/carbon footprint of serverless vs traditional computing. I would imagine that the better resource utilization would reduce total power consumption by a similar rate to the number of resources that you remove.<p>So, for instance, if you at the moment have 5% CPU utilisation across application landscape and moving to serverless moves that to nearer to 50% CPU utilization across a timescale, could it be honestly stated that _Serverless is better in reducing carbon footprint_ by using 1/10th of total power? <comment><AUTHOR> I have used this with a large company before to suggest that switching off servers when not in use was not only more cost-efficient but also helped with sustainability targets (especially if we could track it).</comment>


Ron Paul's "Liberty Report" Being Economically Censored by YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://theduran.com/ron-pauls-liberty-report-being-economically-censored-by-youtube/ <comment><USER2> If true, this is concerning. While many of Paul's views are not popular, I certainly wouldn't say they are harmful.

On another note, this seems like a questionable source. It looks like this is just a rehash of a Zero Hedge article. Zero Hedge has a clear bias, but perhaps is a better source? [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-27/youtube- economicall...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-27/youtube-economically- censors-ron-paul-labels-videos-not-suitable-all-advertisers)

</comment><comment><USER3> At least on the surface, this seems to be a bad decision, and is consistent with a pattern of a lot of other bad decisions around demonetization. Whatever the proclivities of (the more vocal portions of) Ron Paul's fan base, the videos should be judged on their content, not on guilt-by-association. One of Paul's outlets published some racist junk decades ago, but I haven't heard of anything similar recently.

That being said, this "economically censored" rhetoric is seriously weak. There are billions of people who I don't pay to talk; am I "economically censoring" them?

</comment><comment><USER4> What the heck? Ron Paul? The man was actively censored by Fox News when he was running for president.

He's the only person who's run for office in my lifetime that was legitimately inspiring in a substantive way; explaining policy in detail while diving into the years of policy that have come before to bandaid issues without addressing root causes and then creating bigger problems longer term despite good intentions.

He's the only politician I've ever seen that's run on a platform of root cause correction instead of "I will spend tax dollars on popular bandaids to the latest crisis" policy.

What...the heck?!

</comment><comment><USER5> Silicon Valley's definition of "Nazi" is getting really, really flexible lately.

</comment><comment><USER6> What is it that makes people think that private companies have any obligation whatsoever to provide an equal platform to everyone? What did you expect?

</comment><comment><USER7> > for producing videos that dare to question the neo-liberal, globalist > agenda.

Um, no. Why is this bunk on HN?

[http://www.jta.org/2017/04/06/news- opinion/politics/stephen-...](http://www.jta.org/2017/04/06/news- opinion/politics/stephen-bannon-called-jared-kushner-a-globalist-heres-why- the-term-makes-some-jews-uneasy)</comment>


Introduction to Sentience - <AUTHOR> http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/ <comment><USER2> Once you decide that self-awareness is an arbiter of actions towards conscious animals, (I guess in some sense, 'conscious' now has to mean ... is capable of showing its self-aware) a lot of things have two sides. Because deciding something doesn't display self-awareness implies some actions you wouldn't take, you might now take. So, it takes on a burden, of being a decision-logic question with strong implications.

Peter Singer (boo! hooray! (he has fans and enemies) both) seems to say that in some situations, viewed as an almost economic minmax question, cows (who we have good reason to beleive are self aware) may benefit as a species, from complying with a regime where we (force) feed them, breed them and then kill and eat them.

The hooray side (meat eaters?) are very happy. the Boo side (the animal ethicially minded vegetarians?) are not.</comment>


Ask HN: Aggregate Docker Host Info Without Kubernetes? - <AUTHOR> I've got a few VMs which are running docker.
Are there any tools that would allow me to securely connect up each docker host to something central.
Tracking simple things like what containers are running, what images are there.
Perhaps cpu / disk usage and the ability to view logs and open a shell?
For my use case it feels overkill to deploy something big? <comment><USER2> Have a look at portainer: [https://www.portainer.io/overview/](https://www.portainer.io/overview/)</comment>


The Dawn Wall – El Capitan's Most Unwelcoming Route - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/09/sports/the-dawn-wall-el-capitan.html

<comment><USER2> The graphic is amazing, definitely one of the better implementations which help put the scale in to perspective.

Couple of details which I think help put this route in to perspective for the non-climbers:

1\. Caldwell, one of the best climbers in the world, has been working on trying to climb this since 2007--the combination of longevity and perseverance is hard to match.

2\. The easiest pitch (out of 30 total for the route, a pitch being a rope length usually between 100 and 200 feet) is 5.11 which is pretty hard but the real kicker is that there are 5 pitches 5.14 and of those 2 are 5.14d which is was the upper limit of difficulty until the last decade. Most 5.14 routes are short single pitch routes which take pros sometimes weeks or months of practice to climb. Not every pro can climb every 5.14 since they are dependent on a high degree of specialization. There are 10s of 5.12 and 5.13 pitches thrown which makes the whole project together the hardest complete free route in history.

Essentially this route is an order of magnitude harder than anything which has yet been climbed in rock climbing.

I'm kind of amazed to see this much press (multiple NYT stories, new channel coverage) on a big wall climb (or any climb not involving someone dying) and can't really remember something equivalent.

This is a pretty good article with more specific details about the climb: [http://www.adventure-journal.com/2015/01/why-is-climbing- the...](http://www.adventure-journal.com/2015/01/why-is-climbing-the-dawn- wall-such-a-big-deal/)

<comment><USER3> I have a hunch that the field reporters are enjoying this because they are likely not camping, staying at the Awahnee on the company dime, not a whole lot goes on when watching the climbers try burns as there is a lot of downtime on a big wall. It is also likely that some of the field reporters are climbers and that the editors aren't so the story gets put into terms that no climber would say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recommend everyone visit Yosemite once. The scale is mind-bending. The falls appear in slow motion because the water is traveling such a great distance. Enormous, ancient trees appear as peach fuzz atop the walls.

I can't think of another place where you can walk right up to something so massive rising out of the earth.

I climbed a much more modest, easy peak there 15 years ago, and saw the headlamps across the valley of climbers on el cap. Its an awe-inspiring scene in the literal sense.

If you go, take the time to hike away from the crowds. It's a zoo of cars but quiet and breathtakingly beautiful if you explore.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, the scale really is mind bending. If you start in EL Cap meadow and hike towards the base, you'll notice that the base keeps being farther away than you thought it was because the height is much greater than what you thought. This is even more pronounced when approaching the South face of Half Dome (from the South) as there are no tree to obscure the view. Also, if it's your first visit to the park, I highly recommend entering on Highway 41 (as opposed to 120). You don't really see anything until you pass through the Wawona tunnel, and then you are greeted with the amazing Wawona view [1]

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_View](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_View)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's...interesting. I have a second monitor running Photoshop, and images from the second monitor (perhaps just from Photoshop) are being mapped onto the model of El Capitan, making the visual completely broken. This occurs in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (using OS X, if it's not clear).

This does not fill me with warm and fuzzy feelings. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't appear to work in Firefox 34.0.5, although it works fine in Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussion of the effort [1] from a NYT article on January 5th [2]. I think this was mentioned in the previous discussion, but Tom Evans is doing a great job covering this on The El Cap Report [3].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8836763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8836763)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/sports/on-el-capitans- dawn...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/sports/on-el-capitans-dawn-wall- two-climbers-make-slow-progress-toward-a-dream.html?_r=0)

[3] [http://www.elcapreport.com](http://www.elcapreport.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool. I was lucky enough to see them on the wall a week ago, and the scale and difficulty of it completely blows my mind. This visualization does a better job reproducing the in-person awe than any others I've seen.

I wonder if NY Times is using this 3D map of El Capitan? [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130612-yosem...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130612-yosemite- el-capitan-rock-mapped/)

<comment><USER9> Doesn't look like it. The article says it's using a 3D model by three students from the University of Lausanne.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice work from the guys at the NYTimes. They seem to have a pretty solid development team. My enjoyment of the graphic was somewhat diminished however by the terrifying thought of undertaking that climb.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hope they are filming this somehow so we can soon enjoy the incredible documentary that would come of it.

<comment><USER12> Tommy Caldwell also recently made the first ascent of the Fitz Traverse in Patagonia. This route spanning an entire mountain range was considered classic before it was ever accomplished due to the sheer magnitude of the objective. His partner for that project was renown climber Alex Hannold.

There's a film of that ascent coming out later this year, the preview was just released: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOScetWwEwc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOScetWwEwc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why are they doing this in the winter?

<comment><USER14> Climbing is easier in the cold - your hands / fingertips don't get as sweaty and adhere better to the rock face.

Also, the dawn wall is full in the sun for much of the day, and the rock can get insanely hot during the summer. They need to climb before dawn on warmer than average days, or they would make no progress whatsoever. .

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Free climbing seems like the least forgiving hobby in existence.

<comment><USER16> Free solo climbing -- climbing without the use of ropes for protection -- is a no-margin-for-error hobby. That's not the style of ascent being done by Caldwell and Jorgeson here though (it would essentially be suicide!).

Free climbing (climbing without the aid of a rope but using it for protection in the event of a fall) is a quite forgiving hobby! I've fallen hundreds of times while free climbing and lived to tell the tale :).

The distinction between free solo climbing and free climbing is frequently a point of confusion -- especially in news articles!

<comment><USER17> Have they had to rely on the ropes at all so far in this climb?

<comment><USER14> They use ropes at all times for safety, just not to ascend.

What is special about this attempt is that it appears they will successfully climb every pitch, in order, without using the ropes to ascend.

<comment><USER18> Probably worth clarifying: each pitch is being climbed in order, and for each pitch alone they not using ropes to ascend. But between these harder pitches (at least, and maybe all), they return to a base camp (on the cliff-face) before using ropes to ascend up to where they want to start the next pitch.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook is using billions of Instagram images to train AI algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/2/17311808/facebook-instagram-ai-training-hashtag-images <comment><USER2> Google is using search queries to target ads!

</comment><comment><USER3> In other news: water is wet.</comment>


New Cancer Classification System: Could Allow Better Diagnoses and Treatments - <AUTHOR> http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/16535/20140810/new-cancer-classification-system-offers-more-accurate-diagnoses.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> More details and a better story here. [http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116491/cancer-categories- re...](http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116491/cancer-categories-recast- largest-ever-genomic-study)</comment>


Cruise's 3rd generation self-driving car - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/kylevogt/how-we-built-the-first-real-self-driving-car-really-bd17b0dbda55 <comment><USER2> From my discussions with a friend with intimate knowledge of the software side of Cruise, there is wild skepticism within the co that they even have the hardware needed to go L4 or L5. Big promises being made to GM by Kyle which is leading to smoke and mirrors to distract/buy time from more critical problems "under the hood."

<comment><USER3> What does "go L4 or L5" mean?

<comment><USER4> They are Lagrange Points. The cars don't have the hardware to reach them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point)

Or maybe there's some notation collision...

<comment><USER5> It's about level 1-5 autonomy.

<comment><USER6> I think he was joking :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know what to believe. A few days ago I spent some time checking publicly available data and the result is that the current state of art is extremely far from an autonomous car that, could like used to drive a taxi in a busy city like Rome. Not far as "still some effort needed" but potentially "not clear when this could be available" far. Now there are those claims made by multiple companies... Go figure.

<comment><USER8> Based on my own observations, there's probably a big difference between operating as a taxi in Berlin and Rome, and another between operating in Rome and Mumbai. This only factors in other human drivers and infrastructure design/signage, not weather conditions (a different can of worms).

I suspect that we'll see a progression like:

1) Well-regulated urban and highway environments

2) Well-regulated rural environments

3) Moderately regulated urban and rural environments

4) Poorly regulated rural environments

5) Poorly regulated urban environments

And I think we'll probably be stuck on #1 for a while. I would also venture that most companies claiming to "be there" or "almost there" are referring to #1 as well.

I also think that it's possible that politicians may try to legislate a transition up that list as that first case starts taking off (greater traffic enforcement, better signage/infrastructure, more rigorous driver training, etc).

<comment><USER7> My feeling is that under special situations 1 degradates to 5, so to have good security anyway you have to solve problem 5.

<comment><USER9> What are the special situations where 1 gives way to 5? The well-regulated part would imply to me that the possibility of slipping to another situation are eliminated or not allowed.

<comment><USER10> Blizzard. Heavy rainfall or wind. Sudden crowd / riot / chaotic event.

Pretty sure you can't legislate those out of existence. And sadly I think the fact that these vehicles are being developed and tested in Silicon Valley is either a cause or an symptom of their probably inability to deal with those kinds of conditions.

<comment><USER11> Also, accidents, road spills, random obstacles, construction, animals.

<comment><USER9> Road spills, random obstacles and animals all have to be dealt with for any of this to work at all. Construction can be considered in the regulations and self-driving cars can just be restricted from auto-drive mode in construction areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are a lot of big claims in this article. As someone who hasn't been paying much attention, is it credible that they have a near-ready-to-go self- driving car right now?

<comment><USER13> Yep, they're pretty close. Late this year or 2018 they'll have cars driving around empty. GM has consistently been underestimated by the public, but they've played their cards very well. It's in no small part due to the drive and leadership of Kyle Vogt, who is on his way to the big leagues to join the ranks of Musk, Bezos, and Jobs and those guys.

<comment><USER14> Is there anywhere that allows autonomous cars to be tested on real roads without a fallback human driver?

<comment><USER13> Arizona. Their weather and regulatory climate has Waymo, Cruise, and Uber all testing there. I believe Michigan and Florida are also willing to permit fully autonomous cars on their roads, but most of the action is in and around Phoenix.

<comment><USER15> Last I saw, the tests in Phoenix had human back-up drivers. Has something changed recently?

<comment><USER13> Nobody is driving without backup drivers yet yet. It's not because they aren't allowed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow. FYI - This is how you mess up content marketing. If the author genuinely wanted me to read the article and get to know the brand, he shouldn't have used such a scummy title. Yes, the article is /technically/ true. But they are only talking about the hardware, and acknowledge in the second paragraph that they don't have the software. So while the title implies self-driving cars are a solved problem, they are really only making claims about hardware. Cool I guess? But tesla probably already beat you to it?

Titles like these are what happen when marketers optimize everything towards clicks, and don't care about actual impact on the brand itself.

<comment><USER17> I didn't get that impression. Paragraph two says they have "the most advanced self-driving software ever demonstrated," which has been in use driving cars around in real city traffic on their prototypes or whatever (according to their youtube videos), but the article seems to be saying that they now have designed and built mass-producible cars that can run the software. (If I'm wrong, then yeah, not only the title but the whole article is misleading.)

<comment><USER18> Paragraph 2: "today, we're unveiling the world's first mass-producible car designed to operate without a driver"

Implies L5

Paragraph 3: "The car we're unveiling today is actually our 3rd generation self-driving car"

ie L3, you need a driver paying attention like in a Tesla(?)

<comment><USER19> No, paragraph 3 means it's the third iteration of their hardware. That's unrelated to the self-driving "levels".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So GM engineering got the hardware integrated with the vehicle and engineered it for assembly line production. That's what GM engineering does. Whether the Cruise software is good enough for self-driving without driver attention remains to be seen.

Volvo is doing well with their self-driving car, but admits the hardware cost is over $100K per car at present.

<comment><USER21> I don't really believe it is possible. Lidars were the most expensive part and are much, much cheaper now, I can't really imagine how can they spend more than 100k$ of self driving hardware per car.

<comment><USER20> There still are not cheap, good, 3D, automotive-grade LIDAR units. 2-3 years out, though, there should be lots of them.

<comment><USER21> Waymo lidar is around 7.5k$, I would say that it qualifies as a good automotive-grade lidar.

<comment><USER20> If you need four to six of them, as the little Google/Waymo car did, that's still too expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article is filled with very carefully crafted language to leave the impression that this car 1) is being mass-produced, and is 2) capable of driving itself. But if you read it closely enough, it's clear that neither of these things is true.

I'm sure there's political pressure within GM for Cruise to announce these sorts of "wins" to keep management satisfied their money is being well-spent. But the breathless tone of this write-up conveys a sense of accomplishment that doesn't actually exist, and the failure to set reasonable expectations will just make the disillusionment that much stronger when it happens.

</comment><comment><USER23> I lot of comments about building a self driving car and zero showing the "real" self-driving car. Show and then tell!

</comment><comment><USER24> While I'm almost always bullish on new tech, self-driving cars are one where I frankly have a pretty hard time buying into the hype. I think when they really start to hit the streets, some issues are going to show up.

Here's what I mean. Imagine this situation:

You're pulling into your driveway in your self-driving car, and one of your kids left a lawn gnome there, blocking it. The car won't go forward because there's an obstacle.

Simultaneously, a driver looking at their phone and not paying attention comes careening down the road. They're clearly going to rear-end you, hard. You COULD just pull forward and out of the way.....but the car won't, because of the lawn gnome. It can't know the lawn gnome doesn't matter in comparison to the damage your car is about to suffer.

Imagine this flip scenario:

You're pulling into your driveway in your self-driving car, and one of your kids, a toddler, is in your way. The car won't go forward because there's an obstacle. Otherwise, same situation as above. Now, you ABSOLUTELY do NOT want to pull forward, because you'd rather get rear-ended than run over your child.

Even if you want to nitpick this exact scenario, surely you can think of a hundred similar contexts yourself, where driving involves _understanding the value of different pieces of the car 's immediate environment._ A car cannot know the value of a child versus a lawn gnome, nor can it reliably detect the difference.

Even if such a situation only arises once in a thousand days of driving, with hundreds of millions of people on the road everyday, that's thousands of times per day. That's really bad.

Is it statistically _better_ than the amount of harm done by human drivers? Possibly. But we all still get in cars believing we'll be better than other drivers. Who's going to get in a car when any given car has an equivalent chance of making a bad decision all on its own? It's just like getting in a car with a drunk driver.

Who's going to sign up for that? Not me, that's for sure.

<comment><USER25> I always question whether humans are really any better at this calculation. In the gnome example, many people will probably stop to avoid damaging their property, not see the car behind them careening forward, and end up getting rear ended anyway. In an ideal world, ethical issues like the one you presented would be major hurdles but humans aren't going to be perfectly rational in the moment of many accidents, especially the most dangerous high- speed ones when there is physically not enough time to do ethical math.

> we all still get in cars believing we'll be better than other drivers. Who's > going to get in a car when any given car has an equivalent chance of making > a bad decision all on its own?

Given the fact that plenty of people take taxis, rely on Uber and Lyft drivers they've never met, and take public transportation like aircraft and trains with little knowledge of the operator, this seems like a non-issue to me.

<comment><USER26> The other thing to bear in mind: I would guess that the vast majority of accidents are caused by people not paying attention -- distracted by a phone, person, great view, or even just because they're looking the wrong direction. Cars don't do any of those things. They will always be paying attention, looking in all directions at once.

So if they eliminate all of the accidents that are caused that way, but increase the number of garden-gnome related accidents...wouldn't that be worthwhile?

Another, less flippant way to say it: yes, we can imagine scenarios in which the number of accidents will increase. But what is the relative frequency of those types of accidents compared to run-of-the-mill rear-end, red-light run, lane change due to inattentiveness?

<comment><USER27> If given a choice between changing from what you are used to which has drawbacks, to something new that has drawbacks, even if those drawbacks are markedly milder, almost everyone will choose to stick with where they already are. Consciously choosing a position which has drawbacks that you know about makes you feel personally responsible for those when they occur. That is infinitely worse than suffering the drawbacks of the "default" you stay with which you can give yourself a moral pass on because it wasn't a situation you chose to begin with.

There's also the issue of what a self-driving car could do... and what they WILL do. Much technology COULD be amazing... if companies did not function in the ways that they actually do. Because of that, technology often fails to meet any of the promises made. Development is supposed to be cheap and fast, and safety and security get left at the door. No company is held liable for such things, and it would be expensive and bothersome to fix, so they're not about to bother.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nope, I don't believe it for a second. There's no way these can run in the rain, or maybe even after dusk, and absolutely not off of extremely well researched and hand-picked routes. I'm so sick of companies trying to pretend like they've figured out level-5 self driving.

</comment><comment><USER29> The last photo:

"Cruise 3rd generation self-driving car assembled in Lake Orion, Michigan.

It shows a steering wheel, though the info graphic shows no steering wheel. Maybe the caption should read "2nd generation".

</comment><comment><USER30> Call me when it's for sale, when I can put down money and drive away (or rather, be driven away by) a self diving car.

Seriously though. Please call me when that happens. I really, really want to not have to drive anymore. I don't care what the price tag is.

<comment><USER31> What's stopping you from taking an Uber everywhere?

<comment><USER30> Sometimes I drive outside of the city. I go visit my parents a few hours away. Sometimes I want to pick up a huge load of groceries, or go to Ikea.

<comment><USER32> If you literally don't care what the price tag is, hire a personal driver. People do. But you actually do care about the price tag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I feel like what they mean, is the first "factory" built car that has some self driving capability.

</comment><comment><USER34> How much will people be willing to pay for self driving cars? I mean it's nice feature but won't this always be very expensive tech also in the future? How expensive will it be to make this reliable in various regions (road signs, traffic laws)?

Imagine how much money is spent by car manufacturers _now_ just validating the functionality of "simple" tech like locks and wipers at the testing grounds in northern Sweden and similar. All components of these systems will have to go through the same kinds of tests.

My dash display gets funny whenever it's below -20 in the car - I can only imagine what happens to all these sensors.

How cheap do you think this could be made? What price do you think people (consumers, not taxi operators) are ready to pay for decent autonomy in a car?

</comment><comment><USER35> 'self driving' really means the vehicle is being controlled by outside entities who have created technology that enables navigation.

This article is very opaque on how mature this is. The vehicles are the 'last mile' and from everything I've read we are a long way from Level 5 mass market maturity. everything else seems to require you to be able to reflexively grab the wheel and use the pedals at any moment if something goes wrong...

Useful article about Toyota's Gill Pratt on realities [https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sel...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/self-driving/.WIa5-73Jp-g.hackernews)

</comment><comment><USER36> Once there is an 'Nordic' edition able to navigate winters, I'll be even more impressed. Snow, Ice and low visibility are not yet tackled as it seems.

Or we could all move to SF ... and live inside our cars?

</comment><comment><USER37> I noticed that that the sentiment about self-driving cars become much more pessimistic (or more realistic) in the last few months compared to the previous hype.

<comment><USER38> thought leaders are inflecting to the Trough of Disillusionment [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

<comment><AUTHOR> More like the Winter of Artificial General Intelligence

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Reads like a GM PR press piece.

</comment><comment><USER40> At this point, I'm not really going to be impressed until just ONE self- driving car company even _talks_ about being able to handle snow and fog, preferably their cars knowing when they can't drive safely in the conditions.

(It's not just about seeing through moisture: it's also about traction, something you can't really use sensors to enhance.)

<comment><USER41> Computers are so much better at detecting traction problems that electronic stability control is mandatory in most new vehicles:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#Regulation)

<comment><USER40> Cool. But sometimes the road is just plain impassable. And having grown up in many Iowa winter blizzards, I still don't trust even electronic systems. They help, but sometimes there's nothing you can do when there's basically no friction.

<comment><USER42> The safest thing might be for the car to pull over, put on hazard lights, and tell you to wait or call for assistance.

Humans deciding to go continue driving in such conditions is a mistake, leading to more collisions. Perhaps there will be a manual override, like "Unsafe conditions, voice password and waiver required to continue in manual mode; you might die or kill someone else."

<comment><USER32> Once you get into bad snow conditions pulling over is a really bad option. That said, this is a corner case I care less about than crossing Manhattan in rain at rush hour. Or really lots of tricky busy off-highway situations.

<comment><USER43> Self-driving car can go slower in those cases. It depends entirely on how beefy its CPU/GPU is to process a lot of sensor data realtime. The more messy situation is, the more time it needs, the slower it needs to drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't know if this is allowed - if not, mods delete this.

To the poster who had a throwaway and identified themselves as an employee of Cruise, if the environment you work in is as toxic as you claim, your best bet, right now, is to leave.

Don't stay a minute longer, as this kind of thing has a way of biting those who stay in the rear sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER45> The person likely has golden handcuffs that make it financially inadvisable to depart early.

<comment><AUTHOR> LUWTV, lube up and wait to vest

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I read the whole blog post, but not sure what's the difference between this car and the Tesla with 2.5 Autopilot hardware. Isn't that a production ready car that will give you autonomous L4/L5 "some day" ? Or is there some fundamental difference that I am missing out on ?

<comment><USER47> AFAIK, tesla doesn't use lidars. This one has at least 2 lidars, so there's that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Whether or not this car drives itself it's still damn ugly.

Tesla is going about making electric cars sexy.

So you won't find me interested even if it sings too.

Never-the-less, for all the folks the that don't mind ugly cars it's good to have competition to gather all the data to prove that driverless cars are safer.

<comment><USER49> This is more important than one might think.

At the end of the day, the mass market does not really care whether a car is gas or electric.

The average Joe/Jane just has X dollars budgeted for a car and a mental model of what kind of amenities they ought to be able to get for X dollars.

Most of the "mass-market" electric cars I've seen in the $35,000 range (i3, Leaf, Bolt) look like $18,000 subcompacts. They just have electric motors inside.

You fundamentally cannot take an $18,000 car, slap an electric motor inside, and call it a $35,000 car.

If the car is going to cost $35,000, make it a $35,000 car.

<comment><USER50> Not that anyone believes that this car is really going to production anytime soon, but as an additional datapoint: the car in the first image is sporting $40,000 worth of lidar on the roof (5 x Velodyne VLP-16).

I'm sure GM is getting a healthy discount off retail from Velodyne, but production-ready lidar is still eye-wateringly expensive by OEM standards. Some solid-state lidar units (Quanergy) out there in the hundreds of dollars (and one from Velodyne in the works for 2018 release), but the fact that Cruise is still using spinning Velodyne units suggests to me that solid-state lidar needs a few more generations to come up to par.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> That sensor assembly on the roof is ridiculous. What if I want to strap down anything to the roof, like a kayak, bike, luggage, or maybe a mattress? Good grief.

<comment><USER3> The number of times I've strapped anything to the roof of my vehicle (in 13 years of driving) is exactly zero. This particular vehicle might just not be suitable for your needs. Maybe eventually auto cars without roof sensors will come out, or strapping stuff to your roof will become as ridiculous as strapping something to the side of your vehicle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I am the only one who was expecting _at least_ one video?

<comment><USER53> Videos are linked in the second paragraph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> >Electric self-driving cars will save millions of lives and significantly accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy, but only when they're deployed in large numbers.

Just like cars that we drive, self driving cars enable sprawl. Sprawl will never be environmentally sustainable. We need cities that you move through by foot, bike, and public transit.

<comment><USER49> Why do people believe that public transportation does not enable sprawl?

A great commuter rail system is what allows people who work in the world's premiere cities to live in strip-mall exurbs and take the train to work.

I live in Washington, DC. Metro is what allows huge numbers of people to live in sprawling suburbs instead of in the city. Yes, some drive, but traffic is rough and would be unbearable without Metro. Fewer people would be able to live outside the dense city center.

<comment><USER55> Urban sprawl involves low-density areas. Metropolitan areas are going to spread out regardless. What cars enable is sprawl even when there is not enough density/economic output to make mass public transport viable.

<comment><USER49> Mass transit enables people to live in low-density areas who otherwise could not.

A massive proportion of the DC area population lives in the burbs, drives to a cheap/nearby parking garage at a transit center, and then takes mass transit into the city to work.

This lifestyle would be impossible without mass transit.

What makes you think that density/economic output are the main factors in how much public transit actually gets built?

EDIT: I actually love public transit, but I just don't see any evidence that it does anything but encourage sprawl just like cars do. Also, public mass transit's environmental advantage over cars will vanish with electrification. What public transit does do extremely well is get people from A to B with high throughput. That by itself is highly valuable in any major city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hop into our self-driving car! It was designed by a team of inexperienced developers working under a manager who foreshortened deadlines and delivered ahead of schedule and under budget! The software guys asked for crazy things like 'bug trackers' and 'static analysis tools', but we kept their nose to the grindstone. Some of them said the software required more testing, but you know software guys, always such nervous ninnies. Luckily we maintained the standard business practice of keeping every employee replacable so that there were no worries when we booted those guys.

Don't forget to read the fine print about the driver actually needing to keep their hands on the wheel and ready to correct the car should it do anything improper. You bear full responsibility for anything the car does. And have fun!

<comment><USER56> Haha! Love it! This is precisely how enterprise software is developed and if you look at the way our industry has trained its managers, I can't think of any reason why the people that make decisions about these things can be convinced to do anything differently. I mean, if you can build buggy software for a Point of Service system this way, surely you can do the same thing with self driving cars! It's just software! How hard can it be?

<comment><USER27> One would like to think it would be handled by auto manufacturers. But one would be DEAD (literally) wrong. We found this out a few years ago when Toyota killed a couple people with their cars and their "unintended acceleration". The degree to which they were egregiously negligent was astonishing. They were doing development around 2010... and didn't have a bug tracker. Just, nope, no way for developers to keep track of and tell one another about bugs. Who would need such a luxury? Just don't make bugs! The auto industry has a big list of 90+ required standard practices in coding firmware, and 30+ 'recommended' practices. Toyota claimed to adopt 9 of the required ones, but repeatedly violated 3 in the code, nailing 6. The CPU didn't even have error-checking RAM despite Toyotas claims that it did. It was patently absurd how bad - and how utterly standard - their practices were.

And the court looked at it and said "yep, no negligence here. Software has no standards. There are no licensed engineers to hire. Go ahead and do whatever the hell you want, even if it kills people you're fine." No company is going to take the millions of dollars worth of precautions necessary to prevent things like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> deleted

<comment><USER58> _deleted_

Hm. [http://archive.is/VhWor](http://archive.is/VhWor)

<comment><USER59> > Cruise employee here. throwaway for obvious reasons. It needs to be said > that this is entirely marketing smoke and mirrors. The Cruise platform is > significantly behind most other players in the market, and is having many > many technical problems because of shortsighted leadership on Kyle's part, > including high level people quitting (the head of planning and controls left > last month because of Kyle, and more are threatening to quit) The reason I'm > saying this is that this sort of public "everything is fine, we are the > best" posturing leaks inwards. The opposite is very much true. Employees are > very upset with Kyle because of things just like this. I make no > exaggeration when I say Kyle is a mean-spirited, selfish person in private, > and is very quick to publicly take credit for the work of others that he has > emotionally and verbally abused. It's truly one of the most toxic > environments I've ever been a part of.

<comment><USER60> This is accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> tl;dr we have built a car that does not self-drive, but like, some day, it will, we're pretty sure

Funniest thing is they still use wiring harnesses. If you're _manufacturing the car from scratch_ just build a digital bus into the frame.

<comment><USER62> "For now, there will still be a human behind the wheel."

Yup. Total click bait.

<comment><USER63> What is not clear is if this is due to the legal limitations or limitation of automation?

<comment><USER64> It's harder to assess the state of the technology from the outside, but this is due at very least to legal limitations -- It's currently illegal to have a car on the road without a human.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Yeah, no.

Autonomous vehicles exist since quite a while now...

An Italian university tested an autonomous vehicle from Italy to China in 2010: the car was independent the 90% of the time, and semi-autonomous in case of lack of maps or other special conditions: [https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics- softwa...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics- software/autonomous-vehicle-driving-from-italy-to-china)

<comment><USER66> They're talking about mass-production-ready vehicles, not one-off testbed vehicles.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: If I ran a one day "CI / DevOps with Python and Salt" would you attend? - <AUTHOR> I am writing a book on SaltStack and using Python for Continuous Integration and Delivery.  I want to understand how people new to Salt learn it - and it seems best to do that in a small group, learning intensely.
It would probably be a weekend somewhere central, groups no more than 5 or so, priced just to cover costs.
Inspired by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6273823 <comment><USER2> Yes, where would this be? Central what?

<comment><AUTHOR> London

<comment><USER3> That surely makes attending difficult, but I'd certainly watch it if possible. This is exactly what I'm about to tackle at work(entry build engineer).

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool - drop me a line and we'll arrange something

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would be interested</comment>


How We Support 1,650 Customers with One Representative - <AUTHOR> http://blog.statuspage.io/2-300-000-to-one-or-supporting-1650-customers-with-just-one-rep <comment><USER2> Whether or not this number is notable depends squarely on the nature of the product/service. One-man shareware shops routinely have tens of thousands customers and handle all of the support _in addition_ to doing everything else. And hardly anyone ever brags about this.

<comment><USER3> I worked for several years as corporate IT support back in the day. Each employee represented around 2K user's nation wide.

It was very busy and we didn't do a good job (understaffed) but we did everything. Supported ALL the applications. All hard ware. PC upgrades. You name it. You handled your 50 calls a day. It sucked, that's why we all left, but 2K+ for one person for one application stack... not that crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't seem unreasonable. As a data point, we're just shy of 10k customers with one full-time support person (and two part-time). In my experience, it was the process of setting up the KB and process by which you'd answer tickets that was the most arduous. 0-10 users, easy. 10->100 OMFG EVERYTHING'S ON FIRE. 100->n becomes just an optimization problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1650:1? What's Microsoft's ratio?

MS claims "1.5 billion people use Windows every day."

1500000000 / 1650 = 909091

Does MS have 900,000 call center people? I'm betting not. It may an apples and oranges comparison (app v. OS) but 1650:1 remains nothing special in the world of customer support. I would much rather then brag about how quickly customer concerns are dealt with or how few are routed to voicemail.

<comment><USER6> I think you'd have to include a large majority of IT personnel in this figure, as they are the likely first line of support for many windows installs.

That number is probably much higher than 1 million.

Apples to oranges, of course. The interesting part is that MS scaled their support to include people paid by their customers directly because their software was so business critical.

<comment><USER3> Even high-tier MS support isn't great. You may rely on it and `need` the support, but you don't really need it.

<comment><USER7> What? I'm guessing you've never actually paid for an MS Support Call?

They will work through your issue no matter what until a resolution is reached.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure I don't have experience with every tier of their support, but I've dealt with both Microsoft Partner support and paid support contracts for both Windows Server and SQL Server.

They will definitely help you, eventually, and the problem will eventually get fixed. However, eventually (in my experience) has been usually several days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I ran a groupware platform that had over 1,000 daily users on it myself with about 30 new organizations signing up to use it every day.

The key thing was to create help videos and help hover icons everywhere possible. Eventually it was self-supporting no one ever had questions because the answers were all right there.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd be asking for a raise if I were that rep.

<comment><USER10> They rotate support duty, every engineer and even the founders do it for a week each.

<comment><USER3> This is the most important part of the email! I almost got fired once for very modestly bringing up the idea at a previous role ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the challenge is not in the numbers but in the quality of support and these guys are doing it well and substantiating how they did it with solid evidence.

</comment><comment><USER12> Their call to action signup is pretty slick. Full page on page load, then no longer accessible once you scroll down or refresh. First time I've seen something like that in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER13> Weird, the HTTPS Anywhere chrome extensions seems to be redirecting me to status-page-blog.herokuapp.com</comment>